


collar bones begin to crack

by goinghost



Series: sloom - vespa's brain fics [3]
Category: The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: Character Study, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/F, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Psychosis, Schizophrenia, another fic where danny projects onto vespa now more niche than ever!, internalized ableism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-29
Updated: 2020-11-29
Packaged: 2021-03-10 06:20:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,267
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27769669
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goinghost/pseuds/goinghost
Summary: Vespa felt like every day was just more getting used to whatever shit her broken brain decided to throw at her.--Vespa experiences the negative symptoms of schizophrenia. Her family helps how they can.
Relationships: Buddy Aurinko/Vespa Ilkay, Vespa Ilkay & Jet Sikuliaq, Vespa Ilkay & Juno Steel, Vespa Ilkay & Peter Nureyev, Vespa Ilkay & Rita
Series: sloom - vespa's brain fics [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2042317
Comments: 24
Kudos: 51





	collar bones begin to crack

**Author's Note:**

> wow another fic where danny writes about vespa having her own personal mental health issues? who could've predicted that! this one is perhaps the most self indulgent and niche because as far as i'm aware, vespa doesn't actually experience any symptoms of schizophrenia besides psychosis in canon. but i wanted to be self indulgent and niche and maybe educate some people on what schizophrenia looks like beyond what you see in the horror movies!
> 
> SOME IMPORTANT NOTES BEFORE YOU READ
> 
> \- schizophrenia has "positive" and "negative" symptoms. basically positive symptoms "add" to the experience and negative symptoms "subtract". psychosis is a positive symptom
> 
> \- the negative symptoms are often not talked about in media about schizophrenia and are called the "five A's". this fic details vespa experiencing each one
> 
> \- the five A's in the order they appear in this fic are as follows: anhedonia (the absence of pleasure), flat affect (lack of facial expressions or expressiveness), avolition/apathy (lack of motivation/feeling), alogia (poverty of speech/content), and attention impairment (what it says on the tin) 
> 
> \- i am mostly drawing from my personal experience for this fic but i will say that i don't remember a lot of my time when i was deep in the sauce of negative symptoms. mine don't usually crop up and they usually involve me being heavily dissociated when they do so if anything in my fic seems kind of hand wave-y or off, that's why. feel free to discuss it with me in a comment
> 
> with that! the title is from my ultimate schizophrenia song, 'be nice to be' by the front bottoms 
> 
> cw for internalized ableism throughout (vespa does not like her brain), mentions of hallucinations, and a very brief mention of disordered eating in the paragraph that starts, "She’d had to try so hard..." 
> 
> if you catch anything else, please let me know in the comments and i'll add it to the warnings

Vespa felt like every day was just more getting used to whatever shit her broken brain decided to throw at her. 

It was one thing when it was obvious and loud, when the things she saw or heard took up too much space for her to ignore and she was left curled up with Buddy in their bed and just trying not to cry out at the blood-curdling screams echoing around her ears. Sometimes she’d go to wash the sweat off of her skin and suddenly be staring at her own dead body, beheaded and slumped against the wall of the shower like someone had put it there to send her a message. 

It was another thing when it was...subtler. Maybe she even hated that the most. There were times when she couldn’t tell something was going wrong with the cracked egg that tumbled around her skull until she’d realize she’d been watching a stream for two hours with absolutely no emotion or change in her expression. 

Vespa wasn’t a psychiatrist, but she’d done enough medical research to know that there was a word for the subtle symptoms that always seemed to ruin her day once she realized what was going on. They were “negative” symptoms. Negative because they took away from her experience, from her life. It was like a shovel dug into her ribcage and scooped out whatever viscera made her a person and threw it away until she was left empty, not even able to miss what was tossed aside until after she snapped herself out of the stupor. 

It was happening more and more lately as they got closer to the Curemother Prime, like her brain was responding to her stress levels (and Vespa, being a doctor, knew that it probably was). She felt her body hollow more with each passing day. 

Like now, sitting with Rita watching some stream named _Giraffes on a Spaceship_ or something equally ridiculous. She could feel herself not caring about, could feel herself not caring about not caring about it. Her eyes had glazed over ten minutes in when it became obvious that nothing was going to touch her heart like Rita obviously wanted it to. 

She kept sending Vespa glances, like she was waiting for a reaction that Vespa knew she wasn’t going to give. An hour and a half into the movie, Vespa watched her fidget with the blanket draped over their laps like her fingers were trying to speak for her. 

“Miss Vespa,” Rita started, twisting a stray thread in her hands, “you know if you don’t like the movie, you can just tell me right? We don’t have to watch it.” 

Vespa blinked her eyes away from the screen, “What’re you talking about?” 

“I just mean—well, I ain’t ever known you not to say what’s on your mind when you got an opinion about something being bad, but you didn’t even gasp a little bit when it was revealed that Papa Gary was actually the one who created the anti-life serum in the first place! That’s like the biggest plot twist since it was revealed that the resurrected corpse of Debbie Ocean stole everything in _Oceans 46_! I don’t think you even blinked!” Uncharacteristically, Rita took a breath, “It really won’t hurt my feelings if you just say you don’t wanna watch with me, I promise. I can just bully Mistah Steel into a ladies’ night and I’ll even get painted nails outta the deal!” 

“No—Rita…” Vespa tried to think of how to phrase the way positive emotions seemed to slide off the surface of her skin and fall to the floor before they could make it to her heart right now. It wasn’t that she didn’t like the movie, it was more like she couldn’t imagine what liking something felt like at that moment. The concept of enjoyment or excitement felt too slick to hold onto. 

After thirty seconds or so, she gave up on trying to explain and settled on, “I just can’t—right now. I can’t do it.”

Vespa watched Rita abruptly dive for the remote and then screen in front of them turned black. She opened her mouth as if she were going to say something, but Vespa interrupted, growling in frustration. “No, not the stream. That’s fine. I meant I can’t...the other stuff that comes with stream watching. I can’t do that right now.”

“What d’ya mean?”

She growled again, “The—the liking it part. The part where I gasp at the plot twists and laugh at the jokes and just—where I have _fun_.” 

“But…” Rita looked even more confused, “You said the stream ain’t the problem?” 

“It’s not!” Vespa ducked her head when she realized how loud her voice had gotten. “It’s not,” she repeated, quieter, “It’s me, Rita, I’m the problem. My brain is the god damn problem.” 

“Miss Vespa, you’re not making any sense—“

“That’s because it doesn’t make sense.” She ran a hand through her hair as any fight she had left her. It was getting shaggier but she liked it that way, didn’t have to think about trying to do something with it when it was gonna look messy no matter what. No need to worry about it. “Whatever goes on in my head, it doesn’t make any fucking sense.” 

Rita was quiet for a moment. Vespa almost made a crack about it being out of character, but she kept her mouth shut. She didn’t need to be on the offense right now, she reminded herself. Rita wasn’t attacking her, with weapons _or_ words. She was just trying to understand something that always riled Vespa up. 

Finally, Rita spoke, her words coming in a rush, “Listen, Miss Vespa, I know you ain’t exactly the most friendly with yourself and you’ve got a lot of brain stuff going on, so if you ever need anything from me, you just tell little ol’ Rita and I’ll try to help if I can.” She scrunched her face up like she was expecting some exploding reaction. Vespa only stared. 

No way was she telling the hacker anything more personal than what she ground out between her teeth, but….it was nice, she guessed. The sentiment of someone other than Buddy caring about the ways she was fucked up. It wasn’t something she was used to, after five years of being treated worse than garbage by people who literally owned her life. She wouldn’t accept Rita’s offer, but she couldn’t deny that the fact that she’d made it at all meant something to Vespa. 

Of course, in that moment it was a little hard for anything to _really_ mean something to her. She felt the warmth she knew should be resonating in her chest like she was observing a butterfly under glass. It was something sweet and colorful, but it wasn’t anything she could touch, not really. It just left her emptier than before. Even when she closed her eyes and tried to touch the glass to catch the heat that lingered there, she couldn’t seem to reach it. 

Rita was still waiting for a response. Her eyes had been closed, but as the silence had stretched on, she opened them hesitantly. “Miss Vespa?” 

“Look. Rita. It’s—thanks. I guess. But this isn’t really something you can help with. Believe me, I’ve fucking tried. Can we just finish the stream?” 

And Rita...let it go, which Vespa hadn’t been expecting. She didn’t ask any more invasive questions or offer any more invasive help. She just hit play and they both watched as the color exterior of a spaceship with unusually high ceilings bled onto the screen. 

The rest of the movie didn’t awaken some spark in Vespa that she’d been missing or anything, but she had to admit it was nice to be mindless for a while. There were whispers at the edge of her hearing that were telling her things she didn’t want to hear, but they were easy to tune out when Papa Gary and his gang of space giraffes were loudly shouting one-liners at each other. She didn’t enjoy it per se, that much was still beyond her, but it wasn’t the worst experience she’d ever had watching a stream. It let her zone out pretty thoroughly. 

Eventually the movie ended and Rita left to take care of something or other, Vespa didn’t really know what the hacker got up to when she wasn’t taking down Big Pharma byte by byte. Vespa stayed on the couch. She trained her eyes on the black screen and tried to force the parts of her brain that didn’t understand what a good time she’d just had to get with the program. 

Eventually, she felt a spark of happiness light up the emptiness in her ribcage. It would have to do. 

* * *

Vespa started to notice something...different about Sikuliaq. 

It mostly came the more she noticed differences in herself, cataloging all the information she could with the precise mind of a medical doctor making note of a patient’s symptoms. Because she was different from everyone else, and sometimes those differences amounted to the way she threw knives at things that clung to the shadows of the Carte Blanche and also _didn’t exist_ (as she kept trying to remind herself) or sometimes they amount to the way she couldn’t seem to wrap her head around a good thing when the stress was getting to be too much. 

One of the key differences was in the way she expressed herself. It was no secret that Vespa wasn’t the best with words, nor was she the most sociable member of the crew. Buddy had called her shy when they were younger intragalactic criminals, but she’d always thought of herself as more aloof. Sometimes it was easier to react to something as if it were a threat than have to deal with whatever intricate feelings were tangled up in words Vespa didn’t want to think about. She’d been told before that she looked perpetually pissed off because she didn’t think it was necessary to look anything but unless she was with Buddy. 

And then her symptoms started getting bad. And suddenly she didn’t have a constant scowl. She didn’t have _anything,_ actually. No expression ran across her face when Steel said something stupid or Ransom said something suspicious. Even things that used to be able to pull a soft smile from her were only greeted with a passive glance. 

It wasn’t that she wasn’t _feeling_ emotions (although that was starting to become more of a problem), it was more like she wasn’t showing it. It wasn’t even a conscious controlling of her expression like she’d seen Ransom attempt time and time again. No, this was something different. This was that emptiness inside of her creeping up to her lips and eyes and eyebrows and forced them into a placid position where they stayed for however long. 

And that’s where Jet came in. Because after days of her inability to show emotion, she started noticing that she wasn’t the only one with a flat look on their face constantly. 

Sikuliaq felt emotions. She knew he did. She’d heard the way he talked to Buddy, had talked to him herself sometimes when Buddy was sleeping or busy. He had a good head on his shoulders and he was pretty funny if you picked up on the fact that he was joking. And that was the thing, picking up on his jokes. Or really anything he was feeling. It was _hard_. Harder than Vespa usually found it (and she wasn’t the greatest with emotions, but she liked to think she could read people decently). 

His default expression seemed to be that of blank acceptance, and it rarely deviated. The longer Vespa couldn’t do anything but flatly stare, the more she picked up on the fact that Sikuliaq seemed to be in the same boat. 

It made her feel...better about her whole situation. Less alone. No one denied that Jet had a heart when his lips barely tipped upward in a smile or his eyebrows could only be considered furrowed in the loosest definition. It helped relieve her suspicions about the shit the crew was saying about her behind her back. She hadn’t heard any bad mouthing of the way Sikuliaq showed emotion, so she hoped that meant there was no bad mouthing about her like that. She didn’t pretend like there weren't other kinds of bad mouthing going on about her between Rita, Steel, and Ransom. She wasn’t naive. 

There was always a sort of kinship she felt with Sikuliaq when one of the other members of the Aurinko crime family told a joke that she really did find funny, but the muscles in her face refused to smile. Because she’d look over at him and he’d stare flatly back at her and it was...normal. Not something that made her an even bigger mess of a person. She liked that. 

It was just about the only thing that left Vespa feeling normal, these days. 

* * *

“Uh, Vespa?”

“ _What_ , Steel?” 

“Are you planning on turning the stove on anytime soon or do you just wanna keep staring at it like it killed your grandmother?”

Vespa blinked. Fuck, she had been standing in front of the stove like an idiot for who knew how long, hadn’t she? She stared down at her hands and the way they were almost poised like they were planning to flick the burner on at some point. Her fingers trembled slightly. She clenched her fists with a sharp breath through her nose. Why did this always seem to happen when she actually needed to _do_ something? 

It wasn’t that Vespa had zoned out in front of the stove, it was that she’d been trying to _use_ the stove. For the past ten minutes, Vespa had been trying to get herself to cook dinner. And for the hour before that, Vespa had been trying to get herself to walk into the kitchen. And for the two hours before that, Vespa had been trying to convince herself to fucking get out of bed. 

She’d had to try so hard just to get up and stand in front of the stove at all. God, Why couldn’t she just do it! She was hungry, she hadn’t eaten since breakfast that morning and it was already almost six o’clock, so then why couldn’t she motivate herself to make the goddamn spaghetti she’d told herself she would make the day before. It wasn’t even that hard! She just had to boil the noodles, she wasn’t even making her own sauce! It was coming from a jar they’d picked up last time they’d done a grocery run. 

No matter how many times she told herself that, she couldn’t get any closer to actually _doing_ something about it. 

“Vespa? You still in there?” 

Suddenly she realized that she hadn’t actually responded to Steel. “Whatever,” she growled, “Just gimme a sec, I’m making some pasta.” 

He looked confused, “Are you gonna...start?”

“I said gimme a second!” 

“Okay, okay, geez, I’ll use the stove later.” Steel put his hands up placatingly, like he’d encountered a spooked dog. That’s all Vespa was these days, it felt like. Just an animal that needed to be calmed down before it tore itself and everyone else to pieces. 

Vespa scowled, “Don’t look at me like that.” 

“Uh, like what?” 

Her scowl deepened, “You know what. Like I’m something dangerous that needs to be handled with care. I just wanna make dinner.”

“Well, you did stab me once so—”

“Steel, I swear to—”

“But,” he said, cutting her off, “I wasn’t looking at you like that. I—uh, I wouldn’t look at you like that. You’re—I mean, you are dangerous in the sense that you could probably kill me six ways with your pinkie finger, and that’s not even saying anything about how many knives you’ve definitely got on you right now, but—Look, the point is I don’t actually think you’d hurt me. At least not about something stupid like taking up the kitchen.”

Vespa...didn’t know what to say to that. Her fists were still clenched at her sides and she hadn’t even taken out a pot to fill with water, but the only thing she could focus on were Steel’s words. Huh. She knew she was a ticking time bomb and episodes like today’s were just another sign that her days of sanity were numbered. She’d never imagined that anyone else on the crew thought differently, except maybe Buddy, who always insisted she was just enough of a patchwork woman in her own right that she and Vespa could fill in each other’s blanks. 

But here was Juno, acting like her shit wasn’t going to blow up in his face, like she had any control over that. 

Huh. 

Very slowly, Vespa relaxed her fingers and took a long breath through her nose. She stepped aside and jerked a hand toward the stove. “Here, do whatever you were gonna do. I’ll make pasta once you finish.” Then she pointed an accusing finger at him, “But this better not take more than an hour because I’m still hungry.”

“Right, right yeah sure,” Juno said. He moved to take her place, but instead of starting whatever it is he’d wanted to do, he just stood there, tapping a beat on his leg. 

Vespa waited for him to move for a few seconds before she said, “Are _you_ planning on using the stove any time soon?”

Steel was silent, which wasn’t like him. She’d been expecting some kind of stupid quip that would frustrate her more and then they’d probably go back and forth until someone interrupted them. Instead, he was staring blankly into space while his fingers twitched. She snapped in front of his face, “Steel? You in there?” 

He jumped and quickly mumbled something too garbled for her to understand. 

“What?”

Steel cleared his throat, “What if _I_ made pasta?”

“Yeah, that’s why I got out of the way, so you could make whatever it is you wanted to make.” 

“No, no,” Steel gestured vaguely to the pantry where the container of dry noodles sat, “What if I made pasta for both of us?”

“Both of us…” Vespa trailed off. “Why?”

“Wh—I can’t just offer to do something for you?”

“No, you can’t.” 

Steel shook his head and leaned back onto the counter, “Look, you were having trouble and you’re hungry and _I’m_ hungry and I was gonna make myself food anyway so it just makes sense, okay? Geez, can’t a lady be nice without it turning into an interrogation?” 

Vespa considered him. He was shifting from foot to foot with his back to the counter, a hand rubbing at the base of his neck. As nervous as he seemed, Steel didn’t actually seem like he was lying. And Vespa knew that she was never going to make that pasta. There was no way she’d be able to get herself to do it, no matter how hard she pushed, not until her brain could get over itself. 

Her stomach chose that moment to growl loudly and she realized that if Steel didn’t make her food, she definitely wasn’t going to be eating that night. Fuck. 

“Fine,” she whispered. Then, louder, “But you better not try any funny business.”

“Funny business,” Juno said flatly, “with the pasta.” 

Vespa rolled her eyes, “You know what I mean, Steel.”

“No, I don’t think I do.”

“Just make the fucking pasta, okay?” 

He snorted once, but turned around and began filling a pot from the cabinet up with water to boil. Vespa planted herself in one of the kitchen chairs, pulling out her comms before the idea of doing _anything_ on them loomed over her like a monumental task. Fine, whatever. She’d just sit there and watch Steel cook and not think about the voices she heard coming down the hall that she was almost sure weren’t real. 

Hopefully she’d be able to force herself to do something tomorrow. 

* * *

Ransom was annoying for a lot of reasons. His annoyingly long skincare routine, the way he seemed to parade himself around like a peacock at every given opportunity, the fact that he took the prize for most suspicious person Vespa had ever met, to name a few. But if she had to pick the most annoying thing about him, it would be the stupid way he talked. 

Words were not Vespa’s friends. When things got bad, it was always harder for her to string together something resembling a coherent sentence. Sometimes her mind wouldn’t match her mouth and what came out were words that just seemed to take up space without reaching a conclusion. Sometimes she could barely say anything at all, limited to one-word answers with a flat tone. Sometimes she just spoke nonsense, a sentence entirely devoid of meaning or thought. It was a toss up to see how badly her brain was going to fuck her over on a given day. 

And Ransom….it felt like he never stopped talking. He used his words like Vespa used her knives. Every syllable was precise and had its place stabbed into someone’s organs. He weaved tapestries with consonants and vowels as his thread, and Vespa didn’t believe a second of the shit he spewed. It was convincing enough for everyone else, most of the time, especially the marks they encountered on their heists. She saw the way he picked his sentences piece by piece to accomplish whatever goal he needed to at the moment. Sometimes the motivation was obvious, and sometimes Vespa knew she must be missing some part of his plan because she couldn’t figure out how it slotted into place. 

She hated it, every word that came out of his mouth. She didn’t like the fact that he had such control over something that she barely had a handle on. Story of her fucking life. It wasn’t just the way he could manipulate language either, it was the way everything he said sounded like it belonged to the rich pricks that bought up all the land in Ranga so they could rent it out for way too many creds without ever setting foot in the swamps. He had an air of pretentiousness to him that bothered the hell out of her. 

The worst was when he actually tried talking to her directly. She wasn’t always struck with incoherence when he tried to start conversations, but when she was...nothing made her angrier that not being able to respond to whatever stupid comment he made to try to trick her into liking him. 

It was happening more and more often as he spent longer on the crew. She knew he was trying to ingratiate himself to her and she refused to let him goddamn it. She wouldn’t fall for the flower petals that fell from his tongue like everyone else, not when she _knew_ they only hid thorns. 

“Vespa?” Speak of the devil. Ransom stood hovering over the couch looking as carefully poised as ever. Ugh.

Vespa looked up from the knife she was sharpening and raised an eyebrow “What?” 

“I couldn’t help but notice that your blade seems to be made out of steel. Have you tried a blade in venombrass? I've only ever used military grade plasma ones, but my small collection of metallic knives has served me well in the past.”

“Yes.” Great, so it was one-word responses only time. Way to look like an idiot who doesn’t know what they’re talking about, Ilkay. 

“Ah,” Ransom looked slightly ruffled for less than a second before his face smoothed over, “So how do you feel about the weight differentials between other metals and venombrass? I’ve found the added component of the actual venom capsules can lead to some trouble when trying to adjust from one to the other.” 

“No.” Fuck, that didn’t make sense. 

“Beg pardon?” 

Vespa cleared her throat. She was going to say more than one word. She was going to say something that made sense. She was going to say something that didn’t make her sound like she’d never talked to a human person before. She opened her mouth, “Knives don’t do right by you.” 

Shit, that was none of the things she’d been trying to say. That was none of anything. Except when her brain tried to form words to translate it into something presentable, she felt like she was trying to eat soup from a broken bowl and it just kept dripping through the cracks. 

Ransom was staring at her. He shook his head almost imperceptibly and said, “I’m afraid I don’t know what you mean.” 

“It doesn’t happen right now, but next time it’s going to go big.” 

“Vespa, you aren’t making any sense.” 

“Just!” She bit out, but nothing else was leaving her mouth. Her thoughts were scrambled and mashing together too fast for her to make sense of. Suddenly even the idea of speaking felt like it was a complicated series of those puzzles Sikiluiaq liked to do with his tea every morning. Whatever sense she’d been able to make of the world moments or seconds or minutes before was gone as she couldn’t put words to the things she was seeing. 

Ransom’s expression had turned into something more concerned than she was used to seeing from him. The usual confident way he held himself was still present but Vespa could tell that it was held together with duct tape and glitterglue right then. He wrung his hands at his side and very slightly bounced on the balls of his feet. 

“I think...I think this is something that’s happened before, yes?”

Vespa could barely even understand what he was saying, but once she did, she nodded and felt the scowl grow colder on her face. She never wanted the thief—or any of the crew, for that matter—to see her like this, to see how incapable of something as basic as having a conversation she was. And she knew that Ransom would never let her inability to speak like a normal person sometimes go. She’d been holding his mistakes against him and she could only expect him to do the same.

“Would you like me to continue talking with you?”

“No.” One word. She could do one word now. 

Ransom nodded once and said, “Very well. I’ll leave you to it.” He drifted to the doorway slowly, and he hesitated when he finally reached it. Vespa watched him open his mouth, clear his throat, and...nothing. He turned away without another word and left the room. 

Vespa spent the rest of the day alone and trying not to think. She managed to almost put the incident out of her mind by the time she woke up to a short knock on her and Buddy’s door. It startled her enough that she crept out of bed as quietly as possible with a knife in hand. 

She let the door open with a _whoosh_ and sprung out only to find an empty hallway. Well, not entirely empty. Sitting neatly on the floor was a small package of...fuck was that Rangian taffy? She hadn’t had it in years. It was one of the only things she remembered fondly from her childhood in the swamps. 

Vespa looked down the hall but whoever had left it was long gone. She didn’t know what this meant or which of the crew had decided to—to prank her or whatever this was but there was no way she was passing up the chance to share some of it with Buddy. 

With one last useless look around, Vespa took the package of candy and went back to bed. 

* * *

Buddy was saying...something. 

It was probably something important, if Vespa had to guess. Something dire to whatever their next mission was. The thing was, she didn’t know what that even was. For the past half an hour, Vespa had been completely zoned out from the family meeting taking place around her. 

She usually didn’t say much during these so no one had commented yet on the way her focus has shifted from Buddy’s outline of the plan to the water dripping from the sink (they needed to fix that soon) or the conversations only she could hear being whispered in her ears by non-existent people. 

Vespa looked at everything _but_ Buddy at the head of the table. Every time she tried to focus on her partner, it was like all of her thoughts started running in different directions and she had to chase each and every one of them down. She couldn’t listen to whatever Buddy had been talking about because she couldn’t listen to _anything_ for longer than a few seconds before she caught sight of another thought in the opposite direction and went running after it. 

Usually, she was better about this. Usually she could at least catch the gist of what Buddy said and could make plans to ask her about it later in more private company. But right then she could practically see the words going in one of her ears and right out the other without making an pit stops in her brain to be mangled into something coherent. 

It was no use. She would just have to interrogate Buddy that night when they were getting ready for bed. At least this seemed to be a meeting where Buddy did a whole lot of talking and not a lot of listening. She didn’t know what she’d say if she were expected to contribute. 

“Do you agree, Vespa?” Oh great, her luck got worse, right on cue. Buddy looked at her expectantly, like she knew her answer already.

She grunted an affirmation because she figured she had a 50/50 shot of it being whatever Buddy expected her to say. 

It must have been the wrong answer because Buddy’s head titled questioningly. “So you think going through the vents is a good plan then, dear?” 

Going through the vents? Hell no. Vespa hated small spaces and she hated dark places and she hated having to memorize a map with the swiss cheese block of a brain that was rattling around her skull. But she’d already agreed to it and it’d be more suspicious if she backed out now so she nodded and said, “Uh, yeah, Bud. Vents sound great.”

Buddy obviously wasn’t buying it, but she didn’t seem like she was going to argue with her on it. Instead she switched gears and brought the meeting to its conclusion. Vespa couldn’t help the small sigh of relief when Buddy dismissed them. Now she could stare into space and do a million tasks she wouldn’t complete, not worrying about all of the important information she was missing by having no attention span. 

She got up to do just that, probably gather some books or something to flip through and head to the observation deck, when she felt a hand on her shoulder. She fought back a flinch before she realized it was Buddy. Of course it was Buddy, no one else on the Carte Blanche touched her so casually. 

“Vespa, darling,” Buddy said, “are you alright?”

Vespa cleared her throat. Her brain felt like it was vibrating in her skull with nervous energy, “Yeah, ‘course. Never—uh, never better.” 

“Really? Because you agreed to the vents plan much more easily than I’d thought. I even had a backup job for you prepared if you’d said no.” Buddy’s tone was concerned and her eyes were gentle. Vespa was torn between barely being able to look at her and wanting so badly to drink the sight in. 

“Look, it’s fine. We don’t have to uproot everything because of me. I’ll do whatever it is you need me to do and we’ll get the—uh, the thing. That we’re getting.” 

“Vespa…” Buddy stared into her eyes and said, “Do you not know what we’re going to steal?” 

“I—Well, I…” Vespa tried to think of a proper response, but the only thing that sprang into her mind was the truth. “Couldn’t focus,” she grunted, “Bad brain day.” 

The concern in Buddy’s face melted into something even softer, something that wrapped Vespa up in its embrace and told her that things might be okay this time, “Oh, Vespa, I wish you would have told me. We can go over the meeting tomorrow. For now, is there anything I can do to help.” 

Against her will, Vespa felt tears prick at the corners of her vision. Stupid, it was a stupid thing to cry about. Buddy had been working on being more understanding of her...condition lately and it seemed like she’d been practicing what she would say in a scenario like this because her tone was firm and just the right side of empathetic. The fact that she was willing to do something—-anything to help Vespa made her feel like the vibration in her head was finally starting to slow down, just for a moment. 

“I just—I think I should be alone right now,” Vespa said, because she didn’t think she could have a real conversation about her feelings or whatever just then. “But I’ll be back in our room tonight for bed and tomorrow we can go over everything.”

Buddy nodded, “And we’ll just remove the vents from our future plans.” 

“You don’t have to—”

“Vespa, it isn’t fair to hold you to an agreement you didn’t know you were making. Of course we’ll change that part of the heist.” Buddy smiled at her with her sparkling eyes, “As I said, I’m a remarkable strategist and so I’d already prepared a backup for the inevitability of your denial.” 

Her tone was light and teasing. She was obviously trying to goad Vespa into humor. Vespa rose to the bait gladly, “Remarkable strategist, huh?”

“Why, darling, are you implying otherwise?” 

Vespa smirked, “If you knew I’d say no, why include the vents in the first place?”

Buddy smirked back, “You wouldn’t shame me for having hopes that this plan would be a simple one, would you?”

“No,” Vespa snorted, “No, I guess not.” She felt her attention flitter to a Rangian mosquito flying around the kitchen doorway. She watched the artificial ship lights glint off its translucent wings. From the fact that nobody had screamed yet, she guessed it wasn’t real. Huh, she hadn’t seen one of those things in years. Did they always have such large red eyes or was that just her brain extrapolating? 

“Vespa?” 

She blinked and the mosquito was gone. Buddy still had a slight smirk but it was dimmer than it had been a second ago, “Are you with me?” 

“Yeah, sorry,” she said, “Got distracted. I’m gonna head over to the observation deck. I’ll see you tonight, okay, Bud?” 

Buddy nodded and leaned in to give Vespa a quick peck on the cheek. She felt the waxiness of her lipstick leave a mark, “I look forward to it.” 

Vespa made her way out of the kitchen after that. She wandered around gathering mindless things she could occupy her runaway thoughts with until she had a good amount of useless junk to do. She couldn’t stop thinking about the fact that Buddy had been so willing to help her, about the fact that it felt like everyone on the crew had seen her at her most fucked up and still wanted to be around her. 

Why did they comfort her? She knew Buddy at least loved her, and Sikuliaq and Rita didn’t hate her, but Ransom and Steel could barely be in the same room as her. And, yeah, that was mostly her fault, but it meant that it made even less sense why they would be nice to her. Why did they care? Why did any of them care?

She couldn’t think of an answer. Just like the way her mind turned against her every day didn’t have an answer beyond some bad decisions she didn’t have a choice but to make. Maybe that was it, maybe they were just making their own bad decisions, putting their faith in Vespa’s ability to get better. She couldn’t understand why they thought she was at all in charge of the directions her mind leapt into without care for leaving her sanity behind. What had Vespa done to deserve anything but a shuttle planetside and a nice trip to a psychiatric ward. Vespa Ilkay wasn’t someone you bet on if you wanted to win. 

But...it had helped, what everyone had been doing around her as she spiraled further and further out of control. It had made her feel...better. Safer. Whatever other feel-good word you wanted to use. And she couldn’t make decisions for other people, Ransom was evidence enough of that. Maybe their bad decisions wouldn’t leave them with a fried brain and a debtor’s tag she couldn’t wait to rip off. Maybe she could keep letting them bet on her, even if it meant they’d lose more money than even Buddy could steal. 

It wouldn’t fix the fact that her mind would always be a few steps closer to fracturing than most. It wouldn’t change how often she couldn’t enjoy something or speak right or whatever else. But maybe that wasn’t the important part. Maybe it would help with...everything else about having Vespa Ilkay’s brain. Maybe that mattered more. 

And maybe betting on her wouldn’t always be a bad decision. 

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading!
> 
> you can find me on [twitter](https://twitter.com/GHOSTZVNE) where i talk about schizophrenia, vesbud, and the penumbra podcast in general A LOT!
> 
> like i said, this is my most self indulgent and niche fic so it would mean the absolute world to me if you left a comment and kudos because it might be one of my favorite things i've written for penumbra and by virtue of what it is it probably won't get a lot of attention


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